Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research

The Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change — named in honour of George Hadley

George Hadley

George Hadley was an English lawyer and amateur meteorologist who proposed the atmospheric mechanism by which the Trade Winds are sustained. As a key factor in ensuring that European sailing vessels reached North American shores, understanding the Trade Winds was becoming a matter of great...

— is part of, and based at the headquarters of the Met Office

Met Office

The Met Office , is the United Kingdom's national weather service, and a trading fund of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...

in Exeter

Exeter

Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...

. The Hadley Centre provides a focus in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

for the scientific issues associated with climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

Foundation

The Hadley Centre was founded in 1990, having been approved by the then British Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

and was first named the Hadley Centre for Climate Research and Prediction but subsequently re-named on various occasions.

Major Aims

The Centre’s has several major aims:

To understand physical, chemical and biological processes within the climate system and develop state-of-the-art climate model
Climate model
Climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and ice. They are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the climate system to projections of future climate...

s which represent them
To use climate models to simulate global and regional climate variability and change over the last 100 years and to predict changes over the next 100 years
To monitor global and national climate variability and change
To attribute recent changes in climate
Attribution of recent climate change
Attribution of recent climate change is the effort to scientifically ascertain mechanisms responsible for recent changes observed in the Earth's climate...

to specific factors
To understand, with the aim of predicting, the natural inter-annual to decadal variability of climate

In 2005 the centre hosted the international scientific conference Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change
Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change
The related terms "avoiding dangerous climate change" and "preventing dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" date to 1995 and earlier, in the Second Assesment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change and previous science it cites.In 2002, the United Nations...

.

The Met Office employs over 1500 staff, with approximately 200 working in its climate research unit. Most of its funding comes from contracts with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is the government department responsible for environmental protection, food production and standards, agriculture, fisheries and rural communities in the United Kingdom...

(DEFRA), other United Kingdom Government departments and the European Commission

European Commission

The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....

.

The climate models (termed Global Climate Model

Global climate model

A General Circulation Model is a mathematical model of the general circulation of a planetary atmosphere or ocean and based on the Navier–Stokes equations on a rotating sphere with thermodynamic terms for various energy sources . These equations are the basis for complex computer programs commonly...

s) developed by the centre are used for climate change research purposes across the world.

Research Projects based on Hadley Centre Climate Models

The volunteer computing

Volunteer computing

Volunteer computing is a type of distributed computing in which computer owners donate their computing resources to one or more "projects".-History:...

project ClimatePrediction.net

Climateprediction.net

Climateprediction.net, or CPDN, is a distributed computing project to investigate and reduce uncertainties in climate modelling. It aims to do this by running hundreds of thousands of different models using the donated idle time of ordinary personal computers, thereby leading to a better...

is a research team based at the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

conducting research into global climate change using adapted versions of the climate model

Climate model

Climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and ice. They are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the climate system to projections of future climate...

s developed at the Hadley Centre. Individuals can participate in the research efforts by donating spare computer resources to aid their research.

The PRECIS (Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies) project enables scientists from the around the globe to run a regional climate model towards carrying our research into climate change.

External links

Met Office Hadley Centre homepage
Hadley Centre data provision
Sponsor of Terra quasi-incognita: beyond the 2°C line. Download video, audio, slides International Climate Conference in Oxford, UK from September 28-30, 2009

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Foundation

Major Aims

Research Projects based on Hadley Centre Climate Models

See also

External links